Shima Iwashita as a Bride in Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Last Tuesday will Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) last installment of its Yasujiro Ozu film festival. During the month of May, I saw a total of thirteen films directed by Ozu, missing only four of those shown. And I will try to see the four I missed sometime in the next two weeks using TCM’s “Watch Now” feature, if they are still around. The four I missed were all shown in the middle of the night. I am, alas, too old now to lose too much of my beauty sleep.

It used to be that I would wake up at 3 am to watch Edgar G. Ulmer’s Babes in Bagdad or John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk, but that was many years ago, when I was a fanatical adherent of the politique des auteurs. I will explain what that means in another post to be written soon.

The films I saw Tuesday were four in number:

• Floating Weeds (1957), not to be confused with 1934’s silent A Story of Floating Weeds, of which it was a remake.
• Late Autumn (1960).
• An Autumn Afternoon (1962), which was the director’s last film.
• Equinox Flower (1958).

As usual, I loved all four films, though I thought the earlier A Story of Floating Weeds, although a silent, was better than the 1957 Floating Weeds.

All the Ozu films I saw were released by Shochiku Studio. Ozu was nothing if not consistent in his loyalty to the studio.

As a special favor to my readers, I will refrain from future posts about Ozu for a period lasting up to a year. By then, my enthusiasm will be rekindled and I will enthuse about the Japanese director’s work yet again.